Introduction

Ulixarm is an open-source 6 DOF robotic arm manipulator designed to give robotics enthusiasts and students a practical and accessible entry point into the world of robotics.

This tutorial series will guide you through setting up and operating the robot, while building a hands-on intuition for the core concepts typically covered in university-level robotics courses.

Tutorial Structure

Tutorial 0: Getting Started

Set up your development environment by installing ROS 2 and all required packages needed to run the robot.

Tutorial 1: Visualizing the Robot

Get introduced to the Universal Robot Description Format (URDF) and launch your first demo to visualize the robot in RViz.

Tutorial 2: Moving the Robot (MoveIt 2 + RViz)

Connect the hardware, configure MoveIt 2, and launch a demo to plan and execute trajectories directly from RViz. Experiment with different motion planners to understand their behavior.

Tutorial 3: Moving the Robot (MoveGroup API)

Learn how to control the robot programmatically using the MoveGroup ROS 2 C++ API. Run the provided demo to watch the robot in action, or modify it to build your first custom application.

Tutorial 4: Springs and Dampers

Gain a practical understanding of PD controllers. Physically interact with the robot and experiment with different proportional (Kp) and derivative (Kd) gains to observe their effect on robot behavior.

Tutorial 5: Playing with Gravity

Explore one of the most important contributions in robot control: gravity compensation. Compare a plain PD position controller against one with gravity compensation, and experience free-floating mode firsthand.